


Drop the knife of separation

by alexscarlet



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Chronic Illness, Found Family, Gen, Gun Violence, Injury, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, OTV Rust Server, Psychological Horror, Survival, Survival Horror, Uncanny Valley, Video Game Mechanics, my friend said this creeped her out hell yeah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28822002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexscarlet/pseuds/alexscarlet
Summary: "Hey Corpse, um, you can tell me what's wrong, you know that, right? I mean, there's no pressure! But if you want to, I-I'm here."That's the problem, Corpse wants to say. He never thought it would be a problem, but somehow, impossibly, it is.
Relationships: Corpse Husband/Sykkuno (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 69





	Drop the knife of separation

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on their online personas - remember to be respectful to everyone involved:) This is the first time I've been inspired to write in over a year so I'm really thankful and happy;v; 
> 
> Title from the poem 'Oxygen' by Mary Oliver

Sykkuno doesn't understand why Corpse is looking at him like that.

"You..." he starts, then stops. "Sykkuno...?" His voice sounds funny. Wondrous isn't the right word. Scared isn't either.

Sykkuno steps further into the room, feeling his own eyebrows furrowing in confusion. There's a heaviness in the air that makes it difficult to respond in a light-hearted way, like he usually does. "It's me." He says, and he tries to say it jovially but it comes out flat. "A-are you..." He doesn't want to ask but Corpse's eye - the one he can see - is widening with every step he takes closer and it's making him stressed out. More stressed out than having an answer would. "W-What's wrong?"

"Take...Can you take your helmet off?" Corpse asks instead of replying. Or maybe it is a reply.

Sykkuno looks behind him to check that the airlock is shut before hesitantly reaching up. He wouldn't usually be hesitant to do so, not around Corpse, but Corpse is looking at him as though... as though he's an old childhood friend, the kind you catch sight of one day, in a supermarket, years in the future, and all those formative years you spent together as kids suddenly manifest themselves right there in the dairy aisle. All the days you spent playing in the sun and the rain, and the days when you started drifting apart and could feel the drift like the earth shifting beneath your feet, and the last day that neither of you knew was the last when it happened: all of them, there next to the cream cheese.

And the two of you, facing each other. All the good times and the bad blood - and the blood more recent. Sykkuno lowers his head and puts his hands up to his helmet .

His hands are tacky against the material of it; he's sweating. Normally around Corpse he gets less sweaty. The abnormality of it puts him even more on edge: he takes off his helmet, swallowing down on a noise of exertion. He can barely stand to look up, through his damp fringe, to where Corpse is knelt on the floor.

Corpse stares at him for a long moment before closing his eye and muttering, "Okay", as though this has meant something to him. As though Sykkuno has somehow answered a question he posed, though Sykkuno has no idea what question that could have been. "Okay." Corpse repeats, and this time it sounds like he's steeling himself, syllables tight and restrained and rearing in his mouth. Corpse sucks in a deep breath.

\-----

_The thing is_ , Corpse thinks, as he looks between the Sykkuno standing in the middle of the room and the Sykkuno dead and lifeless on the floor, under his hands, _the thing is_ : he doesn't know what to think. His hands - his red hands, still covered in Sykkuno's blood, or not-Sykkuno's blood - are shaking. Everything in his brain is telling him it would be a bad idea to let the Sykkuno that's alive (if it's even possible to call him 'alive' considering Corpse has literally been sat here with Sykunno's last rattling, bubbling breath echoing against the metal walls and in his head for... for however long, Corpse doesn't know) see his hands shaking. So he forces himself to breathe normally and feels something in his brain become a little unhinged and tries to make his hands stop shaking. Tries to hide them on the other side of his body, where Sykkuno can't see them. Dead-Sykkuno's eyes stare up at the ceiling. He should have closed them. He can't close them now without bringing attention to the body.

"Oh Jesus, Corpse, are you okay?" The-thing-that-looks-like-Sykkuno says, coming closer, and it sounds so much like him that Corpse has to close his eyes for a brief moment. Behind his eyelids, he sees Sykkuno as he was when they first met, smiling at him radiantly; sees Sykkuno dying on the floor as Corpse frantically, desperately tries to put pressure somewhere to make the bleeding stop; sees both images overlaid on top of one another. And then Sykkuno is crouched next to him - not even sparing a glance for his own dead body - and putting his helmet down on the carpet (not in the dark patch spreading out from the body) with a muffled thud, and then Sykkuno's soft, soft hands are reaching round to take hold of Corpse's shaking ones, like he always used to do. He'd found him in this room once, Corpse remembers: Corpse had been having a panic attack once in the middle of an expedition, and had stumbled in here - the rest of the group had been camped in one of the other abandoned buildings on the other side of the complex - and he had collapsed on the floor, tears dripping down his face and over his mask, and the half-destroyed carpet had been so itchy under his palms that it made him feel worse, and then Sykkuno had come in, with his lilting voice and reassuring honesty, and Corpse had held onto the proffered hand so tight Sykkuno's fingertips had gone white. He squeezes the hands holding his, now, and they feel like Sykkuno's hands have always felt. He thinks his brain might be melting.

"Hey Corpse, um, you can tell me what's wrong, you know that, right? I mean, there's no pressure! But if you want to, I-I'm here."

That's the problem, Corpse wants to say. That's the problem, and it's not one he ever could have conceptualised having. Too many Sykkunos? Wanting Sykkuno back, wanting Sykkuno alive, so badly, and having that wish granted and it being bad and not good and...

Maybe that's all this is. Maybe this is just Corpse's mind's way of...of coping. Of working through the grief. Maybe he shouldn't be looking a gift-horse in the mouth. (Except, he swears that saying is about how you _should_ look gift-horses in the mouth. Paris didn't make mistakes for him to not learn from them.)

Still, he doesn't put it past himself to dream up a new Sykkuno, one that's alive and warm and here, close enough for Corpse to smell that earthy greenness that comes from Sykkuno spending so much time in the greenhouses.

"Sy?" he says, just to say Sykkuno's name.

"Mm hmm...?" Sykkuno replies. Five minutes ago, Corpse didn't think he was ever going to hear a reply from him ever again.

"Nothing. I just wanted..." He wants to know what's going on. He wants to know who, or what, this thing is, wants to know what's happening and why it's happening to him and why it's Sykkuno. It's some kind of exquisite torture, maybe. He thinks about Sykkuno's blood-slick hand slipping as it gripped his, Sykkuno's eyes rolling as he tried to focus on Corpse's face like he wanted it to be the last thing he saw, thinks about how it was. It was the last thing Sykkuno saw. Any comfort Corpse was taking from this - this thing in Sykkuno's skin - sloughs off him with the memories. He's not going to dishonour Sykkuno like this.

"Wh-where did you come from?" He asks carefully.

"I-Is this like an existential question?" Sykkuno laughs, his hand coming up to cover his mouth, "I came from our base! I'm glad I found you here."

"Why?"

Sykkuno stiffens a little, awkwardly. "Well, u-um, I'd already looked everywhere else for you - the obvious places - and then I, uh, thought of here. And here you are!" Corpse can hear the smile in his voice.

"Why were you looking for me?" He asks carefully, measuring each word as he delivers it.

"I always look for you Corpse!" Sykkuno chirps, delivering the line in that sweet, blunt way of his that's so utterly disarming. "Was I not... supposed to?" He sounds so genuinely confused that Corpse wants to scream. When Corpse doesn't respond, Sykkuno comments, "I... I don't think sitting on the floor like this is gonna be good for your knees, you know, Corpse." He's right. It feels bizarre to listen to him, but Corpse lets Sykkuno pull him to his feet. He's got blood on his knees and the new height gives him a different angle on the dead body - Sykkuno's dead body - in front of him and his stomach turns.

"Feel sick." He grunts out painfully, turning away from the corpse. With his hand trembling this much it's difficult to tug his mask down. Sykkuno, respectfully looking away, pulls a bucket out of nowhere, practiced in this, and rubs Corpse's back as he dry-heaves over it. Sykkuno makes comforting little noises that still feel comforting, which is sick and twisted, or maybe just him being who he is.

"Let's go find you something to eat." Sykkuno says, after Corpse has stopped trying to cough up the contents of his stomach. He's using his Action Plan voice, the one that always makes Corpse feel compelled to follow him anywhere. Sykkuno withdraws his hand from Corpse's back long enough to put his helmet back on, and then he's picking up Corpse's where it was lying on its side, tossed in a corner from when Corpse had rushed into the room, following the sounds of Sykkuno's pain and smears of blood across the walls to find his friend inside. Sykkuno helps Corpse with his helmet, and then opens the door for him. Corpse walks out, silently. Before Sykkuno closes the airlock again, he glances back and catches one last glimpse of Sykkuno's corpse, cold and small on the floor. Sykkuno's always been smaller than him but he seemed even more so in death, with all his light and wit and love bled away. Corpse doesn't want to leave him like that. But the door shuts and he's got more immediate problems to face.

"So..." New-Sykkuno says, tone light and cheerful as he surveys the abandoned building complex around them. There are multiple clusters of surviving buildings scattered north of their base, and this is the one they'd decided a few years ago had probably been a retail park. Now, it's little more than crumbling brick and concrete. Sometimes, you'll find new scrap here. Everywhere, the wild is reclaiming it. Sykkuno touches his temple to bring up the map on his eyescreen with one hand, the other one disappearing into a pocket. "Where d'ya think the others are?" His hand appears in front of Corpse with two pills in his palm - Corpse's painkillers, which Sykkuno always carries on him, just in case - and Corpse takes them without hesitation. Even if he knows nothing about what the fuck is happening, he knows a lot about pain.

Sykkuno starts walking determinedly in one direction and Corpse decides following is easier than doing anything else. "Do you remember anything?" Sykkuno muses, clearly trying to recall...Corpse doesn't know what he's trying to recall. What there _is_ for him to recall. Does this thing... this thing wearing Sykkuno's face or... this Sykkuno... even have memories? Are they real ones? Or implanted or?

Corpse tries to rewind in his head, reconstruct the night before, but there are huge chunks of time missing. Forget Sykkuno's memory: his own is a wreck. He can feel the edges around the missing parts but can't conceptualise their size, what might fill them. It's a minefield, jagged and blurry all at once, with all the mines already exploded. Picketed with holes that have no shape or substance to them. He's not sure these memories ever existed in the first place; isn't sure which of the memories remaining he can trust. He picks up the earliest thread of surety he can.

"We were heading north, on an excursion for loot. Rae wanted a new gun." It hurts to say her name. He wonders how she'd be reacting if she were in his shoes right now. Thinks about Rae finding out Sykkuno was dead and quickly changes thoughts because he doesn't want to do that to her, even in imagination. Even if he will eventually be the one informing her. _If she's alive to hear it._ "And we all needed more ammo. It was dark. I didn't think we were this close to the retail park, but I guess we must've been. There were gunshots." He can hear them again. "People screaming." He can hear that too.

"Mm, I heard the screaming. It was kinda scary, heh!"

Corpse's stomach flips over with the casualness of his tone. It _was_ scary, and it is _still_ scary, and he doesn't know at what point this Sykkuno stopped being scared. Does this... _new_ Sykkuno know that their friends are still alive, and is that why he's not scared? Or does he simply not care? Or did he...?

"By the way, thanks for looking after my body! That was sweet of you."

Corpse stops walking.

"Yeah, I can't do this anymore. What do you mean it was sweet of me to look after your body?" The words rush out of Corpse, tumbling one over another. He feels cold and then hot again, like he's got a fever. Maybe he does have a fever. Maybe he's hallucinating. Maybe he's gone literally mad with grief. Maybe the Sykkuno in front of him is about to fucking kill him. "You were dead."

\-----

Sykkuno stops and squints back at Corpse. "Uh...yeah? Have you... have you never seen a dead body before, Corpse?" A shot of amusement bursts through his confusion. "That's - That's kinda ironic! H-Have, um, have you never looked in a mirror, Corpse?" He laughs. He stops laughing when Corpse doesn't join in. It's one of his favourite sounds in the whole world, he thinks, Corpse's laughter. The others always say Corpse "giggles", which Sykkuno used to be hesitant to agree with, but it _is_ the most accurate description. He giggles. He's cute. "I-I was trying to make a joke, you know, because your name is Corpse and-" He stops picking his way over the rubble, standing still and looking over at Corpse's helmeted head. "Sorry, was it not funny?"

"It might have been." Corpse says quietly. He starts walking again, and Sykkuno trails after him, feeling like flotsam floating on the tide. He watches Corpse make a fist with his hand and then flex his fingers out. He sees Corpse sway, slightly, trembling, before he pulls himself suddenly upright again. He's so subdued and tense and Sykkuno is so worried. What's wrong? What isn't Corpse telling him? He doesn't want to ask; he doesn't want to intrude, if Corpse doesn't want to tell him. But maybe Corpse just can't find the words? He feels that way a lot, so he can understand. If only Rae were here. She always knows when to push and when to leave things; she's much better at that than Sykkuno is.

"Well, um, I meant what I said, when I said it was sweet of you, and uh... I have a gun at home that's kind of nice- " An understatement. It's a perfect gun. "That you could have, maybe, if you want? As a thank you!"

"A thank you?" Corpse repeats, only the tone is all wrong. Sykkuno finds himself subconsciously recoiling.

"I-I guess that's a no."

"Where are we going." Corpse asks - or... demands? - instead of replying. "Where are you taking me?"

Now that's a step too far. Sykkuno can feel something solid harden between his ribs, feels the metal slip through in his voice. "Hey, I'm not taking you anywhere. _I'm_ heading over to Ash's last known location and _you're_ following me." Okay, too much steel. Sykkuno feels hot, frustrated at himself for being so defensive, for letting that defensiveness out. And then he realises Corpse is laughing.

\-----

Corpse doesn't know how he started laughing but now he can't stop. Sykkuno joins in, hesitantly at first, and then fondly after that. Corpse just lets himself enjoy the release of it for a moment, without questioning it. The joy of laughing with Sykkuno, something he thought he'd never feel again.

He wheezes in between his giggles, "I- Sy, I always follow you!" He feels helplessly honest as he says it.

Sykkuno's laugh is a little self-conscious - shy? - as he replies, "Yup, that's true, you do." They stand in companionable quiet for a moment, and then start walking again, picking their way over the rubble which gradually starts giving way to longer woodland grasses.

"Ash's last known location." Corpse says. "Is that near here?"

"Yeah," Sykkuno clarifies, "Her tracker isn't currently transmitting, but I managed to pick up her last transmission and it's pre-tty close."

Whatever had been settled by their laughter is swiftly unsettled in Corpse's stomach as he considers the implications, and then tries _not_ to consider them. Maybe Ash's tracker isn't working because it got damaged in the fighting. Maybe she lost it, and she's currently safe at home, waiting for them to return and-

"Wait, you said you came from base?" he asks Sykkuno, frowning.

"Oh, my personal base, not the collective one. I had some stuff there I wanted to collect." Convenient, Corpse thinks, gritting his teeth. They'd left Brodin at base. "Like your meds." Sykkuno says, which makes Corpse un-grit his teeth. Even fucking zombie Sykkuno is a nice guy. "How are your knees doing, by the way? It seemed like you'd been kneeling there for a long time...

"Corpse?"

Corpse emerges out of the sudden memory Sykkuno's words had thrown him into, sucking in frantic breaths as if he'd nearly drowned. He remembers being pursued across a river years ago, remembers slipping on rocks and nearly going under, the brain-numbing panic. Remembers Ash teaching him how to swim, afterwards, her sing-song voice gently teasing. Allthis flashes throughhis mind in a split second. "I'm okay, I'm okay."

There's a pause and then Sykkuno says, "Well, if you're sure." in a way that makes it clear Sykkuno does not wholly believe him.

"It's nothing." Corpse says, acknowledging that it _is_ something, but nothing he wants to share. Typically, Sykkuno doesn't press him on it, which is what he was counting on.

"Can you run?" Sykkuno asks, which Corpse thinks sounds threatening as hell, but which he somehow knows Sykkuno doesn't mean in a threatening way. He takes stock of his body - new aches (from the fighting and the...grief) and old, familiar ones - and gives a tight nod in response. "Great! Let's go."

For all that Sykkuno doesn't work out, or ever seem like he's particularly athletic, he's off like a shot with seemingly no effort. Corpse grunts and drags his body after him.

They enter the forest and run over solid dirt and grass through dappled sunlight for maybe five minutes before Sykkuno slows down. "Should be right over h- oh."

Corpse stumbles to a halt just before he sees...whatever Sykkuno can see. His senses kick into overdrive. He can see the crisp outline of sunshine on the leaves of the trees ahead, bright against the shadows. He can smell the gentle rot of the undergrowth, and under that the dark, metallic tang of blood (he's intimately familiar with it). He feels the air against his skin, just hotter than pleasant and so still it's like the whole world is holding its breath. His mouth is a desert, cakey and dry. He swallows. He makes himself look at the foot poking out from behind the tree. He walks forward, eyes moving up, to the broken, mangled arms, the dark, wet, gaping chest cavity. His eyescreen whirs to life, automatically running diagnostics and evaluations - _BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA / MACHETE WOUNDS [NUMEROUS] / BULLET HOLES [1...2...3...] -_ and he fumbles to stop it as he stares at the blood, dripping and dried. At the head lolling the wrong way, the cracked helmet. These woods are full of neurotoxins. Even if they weren't dead already, they'd be half-way there.

"Oh Jesus." Sykkuno says, hushed.

Corpse can barely hear him over the ringing of his ears, can barely make it out with his swimming vision when Sykkuno crouches next to the body and gently pulls at the helmet. The neck stretches absurdly as he does it - _BROKEN_ \- as if unwilling to release that which had once protected it; Sykkuno places one hand on the shoulder - _DISLOCATED_ \- and pulls a bit harder, until the helmet slips off. He drops it on the floor; it rolls. The face underneath is matted with damp, bloody hair, and Sykkuno's hands are so precise, so careful as he pushes it off her face. Ash's face. Sykkuno closes her eyes. Lays her head back against the tree as if she were napping in the sunlight. Corpse can feel himself shaking, can hear his heartbeat thumping in his ears, in his mouth. Feels sick, again, feels- feels- so much that he can barely stand it. The world starts swaying. Corpse's insides feel like they're being hollowed out from the inside, like he's a pumpkin being disemboweled for consumption. He blinks, tries to focus around the emptiness that's growing inside him, that has been growing ever since he opened that door and found Sykkuno gasping for life on the other side.

Sykkuno is...is rummaging through Ash's pockets. Corpse must make a sound, then, because Sykkuno stops, and turns around, and looks up at him. He can't see Sykkuno's face through his helmet visor: he can only see his own faceless grief reflected back at him.

"W-" He has to clear his throat (which sounds too loud). "What are you doing?"

"Seeing if she's got anything good on her."

Corpse doesn't know what to say. What the fuck does he say to that?

"We...we should bury her." He says, even as his brain revolts at the thought. The idea of Ash lying cold and neat in a grave feels somehow worse than leaving her as she is. Maybe because then it would be him who put her there.

"I mean, we could, but I don't really see the point." Sykkuno says, mildly. He says every-fucking-thing mildly. Corpse can't find the strength to ask further questions; he simply turns away and starts looking around for somewhere suitable. For something to dig with.

\-----

Ash's body has some pretty good loot on it. Sykkuno's not surprised. She's the best organiser, and she's extremely thoughtful: that's why he's always thought of her as the mother of the group. Working with practiced hands, he strips her of everything useful, from the gloves on her hands - he pulls them on, wincing a bit at the patches that are sticky with blood - to the bandages and bullets in her backpack. He can't carry her M39, not unless he exchanges it for his L96, which he's not about to do. He takes the scope off it though. Maybe Corpse would want it? He thinks about the tremor in Corpse's voice and decides not to ask. He's not sure Corpse is feeling very well.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading:) I have lots more ideas for this AU if this is received well!!


End file.
